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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19

Aridland riparian ecosystems are limited, the climate is changing, and further hydrological change is likely in the American Southwest. To protect riparian ecosystems and organisms, we need to understand how they are affected by disturbance…
Author(s): D. Max Smith, Deborah M. Finch
Year Published:

Wildfire area is predicted to increase with global warming. Empirical statistical models and process-based simulations agree almost universally. The key relationship for this unanimity, observed at multiple spatial and temporal scales, is between…
Author(s): Donald McKenzie, Jeremy S. Littell
Year Published:

We examined relationships between monthly Arctic sea-ice extent (ASIE) and annual wildfire activity for seven regions in the western United States during 1980-2015 to determine if spatio-temporal linkages exist between ASIE, upper-level flow, and…
Author(s): Paul A. Knapp, Peter T. Soulé
Year Published:

Predicting wildfire under future conditions is complicated by complex interrelated drivers operating across large spatial scales. Annual area burned (AAB) is a useful index of global wildfire activity. Current and antecedent seasonal climatic…
Author(s): Thomas Kitzberger, Donald A. Falk, Anthony L. Westerling, Thomas W. Swetnam
Year Published:

A longer growing season with climate change is expected to increase net primary productivity of many rangeland types, especially those dominated by grasses, although responses will depend on local climate and soil conditions. Elevated atmospheric…
Author(s): Matthew C. Reeves, Mary Manning, Jeff P. DiBenedetto, Kyle Palmquist, William Lauenroth, John Bradford, Daniel Schlaepfer
Year Published:

Wildland fire is a disturbance that can profoundly impact the environment and human health and welfare. While climate is generally a critical driving factor shaping the occurrence and impacts of fire, fire can also play a role in shaping climate.…
Author(s): Anping Chen, Richard A. Birdsey
Year Published:

The Constitution of the State of Montana, ratified in 1972, affirms Montanans’ inalienable “right to a clean and healthful environment” (State of Montana 1972). Since the signing of the constitution, that declaration has galvanized Montanans to…
Author(s): Cathy L. Whitlock, Wyatt Cross, Bruce D. Maxwell, Nick Silverman, Alisa A. Wade
Year Published:

The effects of climate oscillations on spatial and temporal variations in wildland fire potential in the continental U.S. are examined from 1979 to 2015 using cyclostationary empirical orthogonal functions (CSEOFs). The CSEOF analysis isolates…
Author(s): Shelby A. Mason, Peter E. Hamlington, Benjamin D. Hamlington, William Matt Jolly, Chad M. Hoffman
Year Published:

The rates of anthropogenic climate change substantially exceed those at which forest ecosystems – dominated by immobile, long-lived organisms – are able to adapt. The resulting maladaptation of forests has potentially detrimental effects on…
Author(s): Dominik Thom, Werner Rammer, Rupert Seidl
Year Published:

Climate change is expected to result in substantial ecological impacts across the globe. These impacts are uncertain but there is strong consensus that they will almost certainly affect fire regimes and vegetation. In this study, we evaluated how…
Author(s): Sean A. Parks, Lisa M. Holsinger, Carol Miller, Marc-Andre Parisien
Year Published:

Fire is returning to many conifer-dominated forests where species composition and structure have been altered by fire exclusion. Ecological effects of these fires are influenced strongly by the degree of forest change during the fire-free period.…
Author(s): Christopher D. O'Connor, Donald A. Falk, Ann M. Lynch, Thomas W. Swetnam, Craig P. Wilcox
Year Published:

Climate change is disrupting historical patterns of adaptation in temperate and boreal tree species, causing local populations to become maladapted. Tree improvement programs typically utilise local base populations and manage adaptation using…
Author(s): Ian R. MacLachlan, Tongli Wang, Andreas Hamann, Pia Smets, Sally N. Aitken
Year Published:

Wildland firefighters must assess potential fire behaviour in order to develop appropriate strategies and tactics that will safely meet objectives. Fire danger indices integrate surface weather conditions to quantify potential variations in fire…
Author(s): William Matt Jolly, Patrick H. Freeborn
Year Published:

Community‐level climate change indicators have been proposed to appraise the impact of global warming on community composition. However, non‐climate factors may also critically influence species distribution and biological community assembly. The…
Author(s): Adrián Regos, Miguel Clavero, Manuela D'Amen, Antoine Guisan, Lluis Brotons
Year Published:

We have constructed a fire weather climatology over North America from 1979 to 2015 using the North American Regional Reanalysis dataset and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) System. We tested for the presence of trends in potential fire season…
Author(s): Piyush Jain, Xianli Wang, Michael D. Flannigan
Year Published:

We modeled the normal fire environment for occurrence of large forest wildfires (>40 ha) for the Pacific Northwest Region of the United States. Large forest wildfire occurrence data from the recent climate normal period (1971–2000) was used as…
Author(s): Raymond J. Davis, Zhiqiang Yang, Andrew Yost, Cole Belongie, Warren B. Cohen
Year Published:

A long history of fire suppression in the western United States has significantly changed forest structure and ecological function, leading to increasingly uncharacteristic fires in terms of size and severity. Prior analyses of fire severity in…
Author(s): Alisa Keyser, Anthony L. Westerling
Year Published:

In many forested ecosystems, it is increasingly recognized that the probability of burning is substantially reduced within the footprint of previously burned areas. This self‐limiting effect of wildland fire is considered a fundamental emergent…
Author(s): Sean A. Parks, Marc-Andre Parisien, Carol Miller, Lisa M. Holsinger, Scott L. Baggett
Year Published:

Growing human and ecological costs due to increasing wildfire are an urgent concern in policy and management, particularly given projections of worsening fire conditions under climate change. Thus, understanding the relationship between climatic…
Author(s): Alexandra D. Syphard, Jon E. Keeley, Anne H. Pfaff, Ken Ferschweiler
Year Published: